Dominic Ponsford of Press Gazette interviewed Financial Times head of newsletters Sarah Ebner about how it has grown its email subscribers from over 400,000 to 1.6 million.
Here is an excerpt:
How are important are email newsletters as a platform for the Financial Times?
“I’ve been here nearly four years and they were really being used solely as an engagement tool and as part of our loyalty strategy. But we’ve started using them more for acquisition as well and had a lot of success with that.
“Last year we had some registration targets because someone’s more likely to become a subscriber if they’ve first been a registrant. So we were trying to increase our pool of registrants and we did this, particularly with our US Election Countdown newsletter, which is now called White House Watch. We’ve had massive success with that newsletter. It’s had over 100,000 signups and it’s free.
“Newsletters are obviously really important when it comes to getting the FT to people and expanding our reach. The premium and standard subscription thing means they also protect against readers downgrading their subscription.”
Read more here.
